Given that British electronic act Mint Royale was at their most popular in the mid-2000s, and given that I spent a significant portion of the mid-2000s obsessing over British electronic acts, I’m surprised that I’ve only just found out about them.
If I had been aware of them two decades ago, my favourite track would likely have been their remix of “Singin’ in the Rain”. In an era when car companies were scouring the electronic music scene for songs to license in advertising, Mint Royale’s “Singin’ in the Rain” was an interesting reversal of that trend; it was written for a car commercial, but became so popular that the band released it as a single in its own right.
But because my musical palette is now two decades more sophisticated, “Little Words” is my official Mint Royale jam.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. The lyrics are so minimal they could just about fit inside a fortune cookie. But their simplicity is their power: words are just words, but if you mean them, they mean the world.
2. The chords are equally minimal. Just two chords underlie the whole thing, and they sway back and forth like a cadence that won’t resolve.
3. Suddenly, at 4:21, everything cuts out. At first listen it seems like the whole song just disappears, but there’s actually another 10 or 15 seconds of music left. Lean in real close and you can hear that it ends on a third chord that finally resolves the cadence.
Recommended listening activity:
Writing some little words on a stickie note and leaving it for someone to discover.